Dolphins, 2020-21 Archive
Welcome to Dolphin Class
Mrs Bowles (teacher)
Miss Sims (TA)
Mrs Cartledge (TA)
14 May 2021, Care for our Common Home
When they came in from lunchtime on Wednesday this week the children were shocked to find that our class had been filled with rubbish! After much discussion about who might have done this, how we could find out and what we were going to do with the rubbish, it was decided that we should sort the rubbish for recycling and that might also give them some clues as to who had left it behind. We worked together to sort the items based on the material they were made of and then discussed which of these could be recycled.
From this activity the children started asking their own questions they wanted to investigate further, such as: ‘why do we use plastic if it’s bad for the environment?’ and ‘are all plastics bad for the environment?’. Therefore, on Thursday we started looking at the different materials that objects are made; using our working scientifically skills to observe and discuss the materials properties and then sort and classify them based on their properties. We then considered and drew conclusions as to why they had been chosen for that particular use, concluding that plastic is a very versatile and useful material. On Friday we delved into the issues around plastic further learning how plastics can end up in the environment and why they can be bad.
The whole class are so enthused and knowledgable about our this learning experience, it has prompted some fabulous discussions – well done Dolphins.
6 May 2021 – CAP workshops
This week we have welcomed CAP (Child Assault Prevention) into our school. The charity’s workshops are designed to build children’s confidence and self-esteem, helping them to learn through drama and discussions about their rights to safety, strength and freedom. In addition, leaning that they have the ability to protect themselves in unsafe situations, reducing fear by focusing on what children can do, rather than on what they can’t. We all enjoyed these sessions immensely and the children said they definitely felt stronger and safer afterwards – ask them to show you the actions for the saying that every child has the right to be safe, strong and free.
4 May 2021 – Lively Lunchtimes
At SMC we have a policy of ‘lively’ lunch and break times, where the children get to experience various different games and activities to develop their PE and coordination skills, confidence, collaboration and most of all have fun! In addition, as part of our ‘children as leaders’ ethos we have various play leaders for each class that help in leading the play which includes setting up and developing their own games for their classmates to play. We recently had a delivery of some new PE equipment, which included some fabulous new resources for our break and lunchtime too. Here are some of our Dolphins playleaders with their new play leader bibs and some of their favourite new equipment for play times.
29th April 2021, RE – Pentecost
After completing our learning about Easter we have moved on to Pentecost. We explored the ascension of Jesus and the visitation of the Holy Spirit. We took time to consider the power of wind and fire and how they are important to us. Before we completed our reflections on flame and wind templates we sat outside and felt the warmth of the sun and the feeling of the wind considering what sounds and smells were carried on the wind too.
26th April 2021, English
We have completed our portal stories, written them up and they are now mounted on our proud authors wall so that everyone that comes into our classroom can see what fabulous progress we have made with our writing. From writing to entertain, we have now moved on to writing to persuade. We will be linking our English to our learning experience all about caring for our planet Earth and our final outcome will be to write letters to persuade people to recycle more.
23rd April 2021, PE – rounders
Now that the sun is shining (and the grass has been cut) we have started learning how to play rounders on the field. We are starting with improving our ball throwing and catching skills to help with our bowling and fielding ability and will be swiftly moving on to batting too. Great fun was had by all!
20 April 2021, Science – forces
Continuing from our learning before the Easter holiday about forces we moved on to exploring magnetism. Investigating the children’s questions around what materials are magentic and whether all metals are magnetic. Exploring with magnets is always such great fun and they developed their own ‘magic tricks’ with the magnets. They were also amazed to discover that some coins were magnetic and others weren’t – this led to some fabulous hypothesing about why this was the case, we have some super scientists in our class!
1st April 2021, Science – plants and gardening
After leaving our seed potatoes to chit (start sprouting roots) in the sunshine they were finally ready for planting. Working together we filled up the potato sacks with compost and planted the seed potatoes inside, finally watering them well. I was impressed with how much the children could remember during our discussions around planting from their science learning about plants earlier this year, well done Dolphins. Fingers crossed they now grow.
30th March 2021, History & Science – mummification
As part of our current learning experience all about Ancient Egypt the children had requested to find out all about mummies and how they were mummified. So, after learning about the mummification process and why each step was performed, we had a go at mummifying tomatoes – much to the children’s enjoyment and disgust! After selecting their tomato and washing it in the water from the river Nile (or class tap) they patted it gently dry. Then came the fun part, I cut a slit in one side and the children had to scoop out all the insides ensuring the cavity was completely empty. We then packed our tomatoes in our own version of natron salt and packaged them up ready to observe over time how they changed. Great fun!
29th March 2021, RE – Holy Week
During Holy Week we refelcted on the events that occured through our Easter Resurrection Eggs. Each egg represents one of the key events leading up to Easter Sunday, we took it in turns to open one of the numbered eggs to see what was inside and read the Bible description to go with it. The children enjoyed this immensely and could recall the events well from the objects inside the eggs.
26th March 2021, Science – friction experiments
Using our working scientifically skills we set up a simple practical investigation to answer our questions about friction and how things move over different surfaces. It was fabulous to see such great collaboration skills between each group, their scientific discussions on how to conduct each test, how to record their results and what their results were showing them.
25th March 2021, Maths – multiplication and division
We have moved on to practising our multiplication and division skills, including related calculations, formal written methods of calculation and problem solving. Today we did away with our books and had ‘grafitti’ maths instead. Everyone loved the lesson so much we all completely lost track of time and were 10 minutes late out for break time, when I told the class to stop straight away and let’s go outside – they all just wanted to carry on instead of having a break (we didn’t of course, even great mathematicians need fresh air and a run around, we then continued with maths for a bit longer when we came back in).
23rd March 2021 – National Day of Reflection
To mark one year since the first lockdown we joined with the rest of the Nation and held a minutes silence and prayers at 12 noon. We then reflected on what the pandemic and lockdowns have been like for us and on a flower template wrote down our thoughts, prayers and reflections. We are going to hang these in our special prayer space outside the reception office.
19th March 2021 – Red Nose Day
So much fun for this great charity!
18th March 2021, PE – gymnastics
Since returning from lockdown learning our PE lessons have been focused on gymnastics. We have started by recapping the basic shapes, ways to travel and jumps we can perform, remembering at all times to keep that tension in our body and shapes. We are going to move on to creating sequences by ourselves and with our partners. We have some very talented gymnasts in Dolphins and everyone is enjoying our twice a week PE lessons.
17th March 2021, Science – forces and magnetism
Following last weeks science WOWs to engage everyone’s ideas about forces (ask the children how they almost won £5) …
…we explored various items and used our working scientific skills to group and classify them according to what force they used, either a push or pull force or in some cases both.
12th March 2021, RE – Lent
During Lent we learn about how Christians use this time to pray, give to others and fast as a way of bringing them close to God and making space for God in their lives in preparation for the coming of Easter. We discussed how we can all help others suring Lent by sacraficing our time or using our talents; these could be simple tasks such as sacraficing their time of their game station at home to help wash up or using their talent in maths to help a friend. Everytime someone did this they were allowed to add a bean to the jar as a visual way of noting how much good we were spreading during Lent.
10th March 2021, Maths – money problems
In maths this week we have been recapping our addition and subtraction skills whilst solving money problems, inlcuding finding change. Just a shame all our cafe and shop trips have had to be virtual ones!
9th March 2021, History – Ancient Egypt
Our new learning experience is history focused; learning all about ancient Egypt! Everyone collated some fabulous research during our last week of lockdown learning and we have started building on that in class. To start with though we created a giant timeline, from the Stone Age all the way through to the present day. We then place on the timeline all the periods in history we have already learnt about (such as the Vikings, Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, The Great Fire of London and the Victorians) and then added ancient Egypt, it really helped us to get a sense of when all these time periods started, ended and how some overlapped. We also reflected on how generations to come will add our time to their histroical timelines to mark the COVID19 global pandemic, we all agreed how ‘odd’ it felt to be living through a time that future children will study in class.
8th March 2021
It has been absolutely amazing having everyone back in school again and they have settled back into the work routine fabulously. This week they have enjoyed catching up with their friends, reflecting on lockdown learning at home and how it has been for them and getting back to learning in the classroom again. Well done Dolphins, so proud of you all!
January – February 2021 – Lockdown Learning
Since the lockdown was announced on Monday 4th January, we quickly and seamlessly shifted to home learning whilst still weloming in key worker children. We have used twice daily live lessons and the setting of assignments through our Google Classroom to esnure we all stay in touch and all continue our learning journey together. Over the last 6 weeks we have:
In our maths lessons recapped our mathematical learning of addition and subtraction and then moved onto multiplication and division, using formal methods and solving problems.
In English lessons written our own wishing stories and have almost completed an alien exploration log, where we have been able to create our own detailed alien planet to explore.
In our wider curriculum lessons focused on our Extreme Earth, learning all about our planet and the ground beneath our feet. Exploring volcanoes, earthquakes, rivers and our coastline. We have linked this learning through to our art working creating various peices using different techniques and resources.
Continued our RE learning, firstly considering our own family year of events and highlights and then progressed to the church year and what events we mark and celebrate. We reflected on how we use the rosary to pray and the joyful mysteries of Mary and her life with Jesus.
Learnt about algorithms and how to create computer codes using Scratch; we have almost finished using Scratch to create our own game. We also designed our own Scratch sprite characters.
We supported Safer Internet Day, following this years theme of: An internet we trust, exploring reliability in our online world. We recapped our existing esafety knowledge and then focused specifically on reliabilty of information, people and photos we may see online. We recognised that although we try to plan a good mix of learning on a screen and on paper/in books everyone’s screen time has increased, which is not a good thing, so we held a non-screen day where there were no live lessons and all learning was completed away from a screen. On reflection a few children liked it, but lots missed seeing each other and missed the support from being able to see and speak to their teachers.
We supported Children’s Mental Health Awareness week, recapping our previous learning on how we can look after our mental wellbeing, we enjoyed exploring this years theme of: Express Yourself. Thinking through what this meant and then expressing ourselves through music, art and even through what we were wearing.
Each week we have completed tasks to improve our mental wellbeing, completed some form of daily exercise and taken on a family challenge. Some of the favourites have been Go Noodle dance routines, cosmic yoga, daily walks outside, baking and cooking, music and colouring/art work.
I have been amazed with the resilience and dedication the Dolphins have shown to their home learning (and their grown-ups too) – well done to you all, so proud!
30th November 2020 – Science
Whilst still monitoring our seed growth science experiment to try and prove what seeds need to grow, we learnt some more about the how each part of the plant completes it’s function. We started by learning all about pollination and the different parts of the flower that are involved in that process to produce seeds and set up another experiment to show how the stem of a plant transports water to the rest of the plant using coloured water, celery and white carnations. Again we focused on our working scientifically skills of prediction, observation and collecting results, monitoring the experiment over several hours to see any change in the pots with coloured water compared to our control with plain water. There was great excitement when we found that coloured dots had started to appear at the top of the celery stalks and the white petals on the flower had started to show a change in colour.
26th November 2020
After the sad news about the Brixham fishing boat, many were asking questions so we spent some time reflecting and praying for the fisherman and their families. The children then wrote their prayers and messages on hearts; these have been made into a book whichhas been added to the memorial by the harbour. The children’s empathy and thoughtfulness shone through in their prayers for the families at this sad time.
25th November 2020 – Science
Our science seed experiments have started growing and much to everyone’s surprise the seeds with no soil and no sunlight were the first to start cracking open and start to grow a root! We are now observing , monitoring and measuring any shoots daily, capturing our results in a table. We can’t wait to see what happens by the end of the experiment and whether our predictions will be correct.
23rd November 2020 – Maths
In our maths learning we are continuing to look at column addition and subtraction, helping us to improve our mental maths ability through additions of just ones, tens or hundreds and now moving onto more formal written methods of addition and subtraction. With this recent practice and our weekly Big Maths Beat That mental maths challenge sheets the children are definitely improving in using various different methods to add and subtract mentally and explain their reasoning for their approach. Well done Dolphins!
18th November 2020 – Anti-bullying Week
The children also amazed me this week as we marked anti-bullying week. Their understanding, empathy and consideration of others was outstanding. We used the book ‘Wonder’ and its sister book ‘We are all Wonders’ to discuss the issue of bullying further and how we can combat this by choosing kindness, using a quote from the book: ‘If you have to choose between being right and being kind, choose being kind’. After selecting a name of one of their classmates out of a cup the children wrote down what makes that person a wonder, it was supposed to be anonymous but eventually everyone found out why there are a wonder before the big reveal as they were all too excited to tell the person they were writing about how wonderful they were! I also have challenged the class to become a certified kindness classroom through the Wonder book website and I have set up a marble jar where 1 act of kindness = 1 marble in the jar. We collected ideas on how we could be kind and everyone is going to work together towards filling the jar.
15th November 2020 – Science
We have started our new learning experience focus, which is science focused, all about plants. The children were exited to get stuck in and share what a fantastic plant knowledge they already have. We learnt all about the different parts of the plant and their function and we have just set up our seed experiments. Everyone was confident on what they thought was needed to help a seed and plants grow so we set up experiments to prove it! After taking into account fair testing each table set up a pot that would either have no soil, no water, no sunlight or no space to grow to see how they compared to our control pot which we gave everything too. We just need to be patient now and see what happens over the next few weeks!
13th November 2020 – lunchtime skipping challenge
This week has seen our PE apprentice Miss Cunnew running a skipping challenge at lunchtimes. All the children have enjoyed this immensely, from several children who could not skip with a rope at the beginning of the week that by the end of the week had acheieved over 100 skips to some seasoned skippers who by the end of the week had acheived over 1000 skips and many in between. They all showed great dedication, even practising skipping with hoops when there weren’t enough skipping ropes to go round! Each child that took part was awarded a certificate with their achievement and all are looking forward to see what the next lunchtime challenge might be. Thank you Miss Cunnew and Mrs Cartledge for organising this for Dolphin Class at lunchtime.
11th November 2020 – Remembrance Day
To mark Remembrance Day in addition to reflecting on why we remember and must never forget we: marked the 2 minute silence in a circle of remembrance outside on the playground; we made poppies which we will be adding to our prayer space outside the main reception doors and learnt the poem In Flanders Fields, thinking about the words and their meanings, then reciting it as a class together.
The children impressed me as always with their depth of understanding and empathy on this day.
10th November 2020 – RE, promises
In RE we have been learning about the Sacraments and in particular the Sacrament of Baptism, learning about the symbols and rituals involved in a Baptism and the Baptism of Jesus. We created storyboards of the Baptism of Jesus and reflected on why Jesus was baptised, we have started then linking this back to our reflections on promises.
5 & 12th November 2020 – PE, tag rugby
This half term we have started a new block of PE – tag rugby. In our first week we have been practising our ball control skills, throwing and catching the rugby ball, sideways passing and running with two hands on the ball. Everyone particularly enjoyed playing our adapted version of stick-in-the-mud with rescuers throwing rugby balls to free ‘stuck’ children. In our second week we have moved on to using the tag belts and practising chasing and tagging each other.
22nd October 2020 – Art
We have almost completed all our Gustav Klimt, Tree of Life inspired pieces of art work. Here is a gallery of the first few to be finished, more pictures to follow …
15th October 2020 – PE, sports festival
Today we had our second sports festival with Miss Moore, a PE teacher from the college. This time we focused on netball, playing lots of games to improve our accuracy of passes, catching and goal shooting. One of our favourites was battleships where we had to try and bounce pass the ball to land inside our opponents hoops, scoring a different amount of points depending on how far away the hoops were.
8th October 2020 – RE, Judaism
After finishing our Homes topic we have started learning about Judaism. We have looked at the Synagogue, the symbols and their traditions around prayer, reflecting on the similarities and differences between our religions.
Dolphin Class Homework Letter_Oct2020
30th September 2020 – Music
Every Friday morning we have ukelele lessons with music teacher Mr Hopkins. We have impressed him with how quickly we have learnt how to clap out a beat, play single cords and have now started putting these cords together to start playing songs. We look forward to these lessons each week and are enjoying playing together as a whole class.
21st September 2020 – RE
We have started this half term thinking about our homes and families. Considering what makes a house a home and why are homes are special and what they mean to us. We have started learning about St Paul and what he wrote in letters advising others on God’s hopes for every family. We reflected on how we can show God’s love and kindness through our actions at home and in school.
19th September 2020 – English
In English we have been writing to entertain, focusing on meeting stories. We have enjoyed text mapping and performing our model text Poppy, Waldo and the Giant and have started to create our own versions with our own magical/mythical creatures.
17th September 2020 – PE, sports festival
We would usually attend Brixham College several times a term for inter primary school sports festivals, unfortunately due to the current situation this is not possible. However, Brixham College PE leaders are coming to us instead and today it was Dolphins turn. Miss Moore led us in tag rugby festival lessons, practising key skills we had a fabulous time and can’t wait until our next festival afternoon.
15th September 2020 – Maths
Since returning to school we have been exploring place value, using different resources to help us represent numbers, write them in digits and words, moving onto ordering and comparing numbers too. The children have shown great mathematical skill!
14th September 2020 – Art
In art this half term we are exploring the Tree of Life by artist Gustav Klimt. So far we have started by exploring the elements of art and how these are all combined together in different ways to form all art. We are going to continue our learning by experimenting ourselves with the elements of art using different pencil grades.
10th September 2020 – PE
We will be completing PE lessons twice a week on a Tuesday and Thursday, initally focusing on ball skills, working towards playing basketball games. We had great fun being outside in the fresh air, working together in teams learning how to accurately complete chest passes and bounce passes.
7th September 2020 – Welcome Back
What a wonderful first week back we have had in Dolphins Class. It has been so lovely to have a full class again after so long, with everyone ready to learn and excited to meet their friends. The children have enjoyed immensely being back together; playing and learning alongside their friends.
During this time we have made a fantastic start to our recovery curriculum with lessons starting with exploring our emotions in support of our mental wellbeing. We shared a fantastic books all about a little rock called Ishi and how he copes in different situations and how we can all spread a little happiness. We even created our own Ishi rocks to help us when feeling a little worried about being back at school.
All the children have taken to our new routines and procedures to keep us safe all in their stride and I couldn’t be more proud of them all. Well done Dolphins, I look forward to a fun, learning packed year with you all.